I thought I’d work my way into this thing again. Getting over a hump of this magnitude is a little tough. Imagine skipping Mass for most of your college life. Then imagine trying to get up one Sunday morning after graduation and drag your ass to church again when all you want to do is sleep late. You can easily praise Him with biscuits and gravy at brunch rather than the Eucharist at 8:44. Today, writing feels like that.
Worse, tomorrow, trying to write is going to feel like the next Sunday when you weasel out of the ecclesiastical trip on the grounds that you don’t want to over do your renewed zest for religion lest you return to your collegiately imposed heathenistic ways.
Or imagine an air-conditioned pick-up and a humid South Texas parking lot. The brightness outside a theater after a matinée. Someone requesting, “Smell this.” Then shoving a carton of milk toward you. Worse, “Taste this.”.
At first your return writing is a little mechanical. Little more than a proper arranging of words on a page then capping them every so often with a period. Maybe even less, a mere stretch of the fingers across the keyboard. All uninspiring; all easily ignored well before even your most dedicated of readers makes it four paragraphs in. That’s fine. You’re actually searching for the habit, the pattern, the rote familiarity of I before E (except after C). Casting for creativity or color too soon stirs gentle waters and those shiny fish dart for the coverage among the roots and shadows.
Just drop in the line. Just watch the bobber. Just repeat.
Day 321